Mammoth Magic: For the Love of Elephants (Part 2)

Part Two

I had no idea my experience with the Amboseli elephants would be about grief.

It’s 5:30 a.m. and pitch dark outside. I’m showered, dressed, and ready. I hear a step on my porch and a soft “Jambo.” I unzip the door of my beautiful African tent/cottage. 

“Jambo, asante sana,” (hello, thank you) I say as a tray with a thermos of coffee, a jug of hot milk, a mug, and 2 dry biscuits on a china plate is passed through to me. I pour the coffee, add the milk, take a slug along with a bite of cookie, and continue my checklist of camera gear: two cameras, one with a 100–400 mm zoom, one with an 18–135mm zoom, six batteries, extra camera cards, iPhone, headlamp, reading glasses, sunglasses, water bottle, and hat. I clip my old Lowpro fanny pack camera bag holding my XT2 camera with shorter zoom, batteries, and extra cards around my waist. My nylon backpack takes the rest of the gear. I slip out into the dawn. The birds are calling as darkness gives way to soft pink light. It’s a new day, a new adventure.

At the entrance to the lodge, Julius is ready for me. We grin at each other. “Jambo! Twende!  Let’s go!” We head off down the track for the Kimana Gate to Amboseli Park. As the sun rises, I wave at Maasai herders heading out for the day with their sheep, goats, and cattle. Mt Kilimanjaro reveals itself on my left with a flat white cap of cloud leveling the peak. I point to Julius, he waves a hand as if to say “wait, it will get better.” At the park gates he hops out to pay the daily entrance fees. When he returns, the ranger pulls open the gate, and we roll through.

We are barely within the park boundaries and we spot elephants making their way into the living postcard of Mt. Kilimanjaro, acacia trees, and grassy savannah. Julius stops a few times on the shoulder of the road so I can capture this iconic scene that brightens moment by moment. 

A few kilometers into the park, we come across a line of safari trucks parked on the shoulder of the road. Julius pulls up beside one of the vehicles and asks the driver in Swahili what’s going on. “There are two cheetahs in the brush,” replies the driver.  I focus my long lens in the direction he points to and see 2 feline faces close to the ground. We wait a minute or two. Julius and I look at one another and telepathically send each other the message “let’s get out of here.” I didn’t come to wait for cheetahs to make a move. I came for elephants. He knows it and he’s on the same wavelength.

We take a sharp right-hand turn from the main road down a track. You have to stay on the roads in the park, no off-roading allowed. Julius drives a kilometer or two down the road, pulls over, and turns off the ignition. “I think we should wait here,” he says.  We sit in silence as the sun rises into the morning sky. Waiting, waiting for the elephants. “Would you like some breakfast?” he asks after a while.

“Sure, let’s eat,’” I say and accept a foil wrapped breakfast sandwich of 2 fried eggs and bacon in a Tupperware container, along with some added snacks and a juice box. More time passes. “Okay if I check the tires?” I ask. Julius looks up and down the empty road, and gives me a nod and a roll of toilet paper. I climb out and squat at the back of the truck. The landscape is empty, all clear, no rush, no elephants.

Then I see them, bumps on the horizon. “Julius! Elephants!”  He slips out of the truck and quietly opens my door.  I squeeze down on the floor, two cameras around my neck, the longest lens in my hands. I’m ready.

They come like pilgrims on a journey, their destination fixed in their minds. They walk in silence, steadfast, focused. They come straight for us, in single file or wide horizontal lines. Elephants of all sizes are led by matriarchs who soundlessly direct their family’s progress. We know this only by the evidence of course changes, or the arrangement or speed of a group. Like a weather vane indicating a change of wind, a matriarch directs her family with a toss of her head, a lifting of her trunk, a step to the left or right and the rest of the family follows obediently. Sometimes, when they are very close, I can hear an audible rumble, a form of communication between elephants that can travel several kilometers. A few times there is a trumpet call, but most of the time it’s like the mute button is paused on the scene. Bird songs are louder than the march of these mammoths.

I’m in some kind of suspended animation completely focused on the drama that rhythmically unfolds before my eyes. As one group passes us, the savannah empties before me, then a moment later I see a new group on the horizon. “Another family is coming!” I whisper to Julius. I am in an altered state. I use my 400 mm telephoto lens as they approach, then frantically drop it and reach for a wider lens as their grey forms fill my viewfinder, silver with Amboseli dust in the African sun.

I don’t know how long I lie there squeezed in between the seats on the floor of the truck.  It feels like a long time. When the midday sun is high above us and the parade of animals has slowed, Julius starts the truck and I do my best African yoga downward dog to get up and survey the landscape. I see elephantine humps retreating into the distance. 

I look at Julius and mouth “WOW.” I feel like I have been in a sacred time zone. I am hesitant to break the silence. I can tell he is also moved. My mind is trying to process; I can’t help it.  What does this mean?  So many elephants, Julius says 300–400.  He told me later that he was worried because he knew I was coming to see the elephants and yesterday there were none. None? How could that be possible? They are everywhere I turn. I cast my eyes around the landscape. “Julius my mother died in August,” I blurt out. Where did that come from? My grief has been buried, gone for the past few months. I haven’t cried since I sat alone in the hospital room in the dark two nights before she died. No tears. None, until now, leaking out, like a rain barrel that has a small crack in a stave. I do my best to hide them. 

It felt like the elephants came to me like mourners come to the bereaved.  I don’t know if that’s true.  That’s how it felt.  That’s what my heart whispered to my psyche.  I know stories of elephants mourning.  I know they visit the bones of their family members where they have died.  I’ve seen the skulls, been told how the elephants touch them, smell them with their trunks. I’ve heard about elephant mothers that stand by a baby’s corpse for days.  I’ve heard how elephants will try to lift up a recently dead family member, how they call out, trumpet, and shuffle around the body.

When Lawrence Anthony, author of The Elephant Whisperer, died in Johannesburg, South Africa, the elephants he rescued and moved to his conservancy came to his rural home. How did the reserve’s elephants—grazing miles away in distant parts of the park—know about Anthony’s death?

For 12 hours the huge beasts slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of the man they loved—to say good-bye.

My heart is bursting. I am overwhelmed with gratitude. In this roofless cathedral of Amboseli, a death has been acknowledged. A blessing given. I know as one knows when given a numinous dream, that this is not an ending, it is a beginning. I am at a threshold—to what I am not sure. But everything has changed. 

“My boat struck something deep.
Nothing happened.
Sound, silence, waves.

Nothing happened?

Or perhaps, everything happened

And I’m sitting in the middle of my new life.”

—Juan Ramon Jimenez